A collection of thoughts, ideas, and opinions independently written by members of the MSU community and curated by MSU Libraries

Seige of St. Augustine, 1740

This “map” shows a view of St. Augustine at the beginning of its 1740 siege by the British. I thought the most interesting thing about it was this one ship called the Squirrel (see close up from the map’s index), which is a pretty hilarious name, especially beside its other companion ships with impressive names like the Wolf or the Phoenix. But then I found out that the siege was part of a larger conflict between the British and the Spanish called–not joking–The War of Jenkins’ Ear.

Autumn Faulkner is the Assistant Head of Cataloging and Metadata Services at Michigan State University Libraries with a secondary assignment in the Wallace Conservation Lab. She enjoys providing access to MSUL's resources, whether than involves managing projects, cataloging a stack of books, or repairing an old map so it can be handled by patrons. Her research interests include the upcoming transition of bibliographic data to the Semantic Web environment and efficient methods for creating and maintaining that data.